[RFC] Discontinuing SWAT

[Kai Blin]

On 2013-04-26 04:34, Scott Lovenberg wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 25, 2013 at 7:14 PM, C.J. Adams-Collier KF7BMP
> <cjac at colliertech.org> wrote:
...

>> For what it's worth, my opinion as a user of samba for about 15 years is
>> that SWAT has not been very helpful for me for many years.  I do
>> remember depending on it for the first few months and years that I used
>> samba to set up my smb.conf file, and I might not have been able to get
>> a working environment without the web interface at that phase in my
>> professional development.  As much as I like the idea of throwing out
>> code that gets more CVEs than it does commits, it would be best to
>> ensure that there is an interface for our less skilled users available
>> during a deprecation phase that we can recommend loudly instead.
>>
>> C.J.
>>
>
> How about the obvious compromise?  What if SWAT were dropped and a
> library (in a "web language") for parsing the smb.conf was to be
> released with each release under the GPL?  If someone (third party)
> wants to carry the torch for a web interface, let them.  Someone out
> there wants this itch scratched and Samba wants someone to contribute
> some code back.  Seems like a win-win to me; Samba can be released
> without such a large attack surface, and developers can scratch an
> itch and contribute code back.
>
> There's already a parser written, how hard would it be to add bindings
> for other languages (PHP, Python, Java)?

Arguably to make something really useful, you'd need something that can 
talk to AD as well. Fiddling with smb.conf is only good for the plain 
file server.

In any case, if someone wants to step up and maintain a web interface, 
I'm sure we'd be happy to help.

Cheers,
Kai


-- 
Kai Blin
Worldforge developer http://www.worldforge.org/
Wine developer http://wiki.winehq.org/KaiBlin
Samba team member http://www.samba.org/samba/team/